Tarentino and "Inglorious Bastards"

Scott Eyman

Tuesday

Aug 12, 2008 at 12:01 AMNov 21, 2014 at 9:23 PM

I think I understand the manic interest in cultural crumbs such as the pdf's of the script of Quentin Tarentino's new film that are flying around the internet. I'm just not sure why anybody is so terribly interested in Tarentino any more, since it's clear that, after a couple of initially original films, he's very happy playing the part of a pastiche artist, or, to put the most positive possible spin on it, a compiler of hip visual mix tapes. The sad thing is, the guy writes good dialogue and he really knows how to shoot film. (If only Doug Liman did!) But he seems to be stuck with a 14 year-old's sensibility and to be perfectly happy about it. No, I haven't read the script for the new version of "Inglorious Bastards" but I saw the original - I think the venue was the Embassy Theater, a beloved, entirely disreputable and somewhat dangerous grindhouse in my native Cleveland. "Inglorious Bastards" was a fairly efficient but entirely unremarkable rip-off of "The Dirty Dozen," and it never pretended to be anything else. C'mon, the star was Fred Williamson in it, and the best movie Fred Williamson ever made was "From Dusk Till Dawn." Making a pastiche of a ripoff - derivative times two - is not going to lift Tarentino out of the tacky swamp he's wandered into.

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